“If the world continues as it is going,” Brazil will need to invest more in nuclear technology in order to protect itself from possible external threats, Minister of Mines and Energy Alexandre Silveira proposed on Sept. 5 at the inauguration of the new directors of the National Nuclear Safety Agency and the National Petroleum, Natural Gas and Biofuels Agency in Rio de Janeiro.
Responsibility for this dramatic proposed change lies squarely on U.S. President Donald Trump.
Brazil signed the Tlatelolco Treaty declaring Latin America and the Caribbean to be a nuclear weapons free zone in 1967; the 1988 Constitution bans nuclear weapons; the country gave up its secret nuclear weapons program in 1990 (nota bene: under threats by Henry Kissinger and his ilk) and signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1998. There has been no public discussion of Brazil developing a nuclear weapon program for decades.
But after President Trump bombed Iran under the cover of “negotiating,” assembled a large deployment of U.S. naval forces in the Caribbean accompanied by threats from administration officials to militarily “take out” the President and government of Venezuela, and openly declared that he is out to run “regime-change” and economic warfare against Brazil’s government and judiciary, discussion of a nuclear weapon program to defend sovereignty has begun in Brazil.
